Very old age: Dustin Hoffman plays 121-year-old Jack Crabb in Little Big Man
Drugs that can slow the ageing process are likely to be available this decade, raising the prospect of people living to 150 or longer.
‘Wonder’ pills that help the body repair itself are in the early stages of development and will help us live well into our second century – while stem cell therapies will...

Australia has passed its controversial carbon tax law.
One of the worst aspects of living in these apocalyptic times is that whenever you look around the world, wondering where you might escape to, you begin to realise that everywhere else is just as bad if not worse.
Take Australia, an island built on fossil fuel with an economy dependent on fossil fuel. What would be the maddest economic policy a...

A group of New Zealand scientists and flu researchers have won a five-year, multi-million-dollar contract to study influenza in an effort to better understand the burden of the virus and how to prevent its spread around the world.
New Zealand Health Minister Tony Ryall and the Minister for Science and Innovation Wayne Mapp on Wednesday congratulated the Institute of Environmental Science and Research...

An Australian technologist has caused a global stir after discovering Facebook tracks the websites its users visit even when they are logged out of the social networking site.
Separately, Facebook’s new Timeline feature, launched last week, has been inadvertently accessed by users early, revealing a feature that allows people to see who removed them from their friends’ lists.
Facebook’s...

19-month-old Alex Tesoriero is pictured with his parents Lisa and John at their home in North Balgowlah, on Sydney's northern beaches.
He was born 11 weeks premature, weighing just 437 grams, and the tubes that kept him alive have left him with a physical aversion to anything going near his mouth or face. He’s the boy who simply won’t eat.
Ironically, he is fed through a tube directly...

Mahmoud Abbas
In the whirr of diplomacy taking place at the United Nations, the case for and against statehood recognition for the Palestinians has become almost an afterthought. Rather, two countries, the United States and Israel, are going to great lengths to avert the embarrassing consequences of an expected application. Great pressure is being placed on the Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas,...

United Nations human rights watchdog has accused Australia of racism over its treatment of boat people and Aborigines.
School students are being targeted in a major new push to force acceptance of multiculturalism by “embedding” it in the national curriculum.
Young Australians will be trained in “cultural competency” during classes as part of the Gillard Government’s plan...

Nativity: But the birth of Jesus will no longer be used as a reference point in Australian school history books.
Australia is to remove the birth of Jesus as a reference point for dates in school history books.
Under the new politically correct curriculum, the terms BC (Before Christ) and AD (Anno Domini) will be replaced with BCE (Before Common Era) and CE (Common Era).
The Archbishop of Sydney, Peter...

Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard has hit out at a High Court decision that ruled an asylum deal with Malaysia was unlawful.
Ms Gillard called the ruling “deeply disappointing” and said the court had “rewritten the Migration Act”.
Under the deal, Australia would have sent 800 asylum-seekers to Malaysia and would have received 4,000 refugees in return over four years.
But...

The fire destroyed the two-storey house
Seven children have died in a fire at a house near the Australian city of Brisbane.
At least seven children are among 11 people presumed dead in one of Australia’s worst urban fire disasters.
The inferno, which destroyed a two-storey house near the city of Brisbane, began around midnight. The house was reportedly home to two families from Tonga and Samoa.
Three...

Australia is almost certain to vote against a Palestinian state next month, despite an apparent push by Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd for Canberra to abstain from any such vote.
Leaders of the Jewish community reacted angrily yesterday to a report that Mr Rudd had written to Julia Gillard recommending that Australia abstain from the vote at the UN.
The diplomatic row came as Victorian Labor leader Daniel...

A boat is intercepted by the Border Protection Command off Australia's north coast.
Prime Minister Julia Gillard has indicated that authorities on Christmas Island will be authorised to use force to make sure asylum seekers get on board aircraft taking them to Malaysia.
The first boatload of people to be processed under the asylum seeker swap deal with Malaysia arrived on Christmas Island this...

Rabbi Yosef Feldman
ONE of the state’s most high profile Jewish leaders is fighting off calls for his resignation after he urged rabbis not to report allegations of child abuse to the police.
Rabbi Yosef Feldman, president of the Rabbinical Council of NSW and based at the Southern Sydney Synagogue, has sparked outrage in a series of emails to other rabbis when he said it should be up to them...

Australian airports have begun trialing body scanning technology that neither emits any form of radiation, nor produces a naked image of the person passing through it in a move that is sure to throw a spanner in the works of TSA plans to roll out hundreds more irradiating scanners at American transport hubs.
According to UK-based security company ThruVision Systems, their “passive” scanning technology...

A student wearing a burka.
Muslim women who refuse to remove their veils for police will face jail under new laws in Australia’s largest state.
The New South Wales government has rushed through legislation allowing police to force the removal of head coverings to identify suspected criminals.
The laws, among the toughest in the world involving Islamic female dress, follow the recent furore over a...